Zardari: International community is losing war against the Taliban.

I still can't work out what David Cameron hoped to achieve by accusing Pakistan of "looking both ways" on the subject of Islamist militancy. And to make those comments whilst in India was simply crass beyond belief.

Well, now Pakistan's president, Asif Ali Zardari, is preparing to visit Britain and has fired a shot across the bows before he gets here.

"The international community, to which Pakistan belongs, is losing the war against the Taliban," said Zardari. "This is above all because we have lost the battle to win hearts and minds."

The president said the Taliban had no chance of regaining power, but he warned: "Their grip is strengthening." He is due to meet Cameron at Chequers on Friday, and said he would speak to the prime minister about his remarks.

"The war against terrorism must unite us and not oppose us," said Zardari. "I will explain face to face that it is my country that is paying the highest price in human life for this war."

He added: "A frank discussion will allow us to restore a bit of serenity. This is why I am not cancelling my visit to London despite this serious accusation. The relationship between our two countries is old and sufficiently robust for that."

And even hardened Tories seem to be shaking their heads in disbelief at Cameron's comments:

The former Conservative party chairman Lord Tebbit said in the London Evening Standard: "I called it sloppy, slap-happy government. It is time for some disciplined thought and disciplined action. Being a prime minister is a serious business."

Tebbit said Cameron's comments exposed a "muddle" in British policy on countering terrorism.

George Bush used to put Musharraf into a similar situation, to the point where Musharraf had to publicly state that he was not America's poodle. Bush never seemed to understand that his War on Terror was deeply unpopular in Pakistan and that Musharraf paid a terrible price for supporting it:

He has suffered terribly for supporting the war in terror. Since shortly after 9-11 there were rioting protesters roaming his streets demanding that Pakistan not be used as a base for the intended attack on Afghanistan.

As we all know Colin Powell had left Musharraf with no choice other than to comply. His compliance made him so unpopular in Pakistan that he suffered from two assassination attempts.

One would imagine that with the situation so fragile that Bush would recognise his ally's troubles and tread gingerly, especially as Pakistan is a nuclear power and the removal of Musharraf from office could allow these weapons to fall into the hands of al Qaeda.

Did Bush tread carefully? Not a bit of it.

Asif Ali Zardari is now being treated in a similar fashion by Cameron. Just because something is true, it does not necessarily follow that it is wise to say it aloud. And it is never wise to criticise any ally whilst standing in the country of their oldest enemy.

The prime minister was also criticised by the former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell, who suggested Cameron could mollify Pakistan by pledging more money to the relief effort after floods that have killed more than 1,000 people.

"It is not in our interests to be at loggerheads with a country which is so important to the outcome in Afghanistan and so essential to our national security," Campbell said. "The more generous we can be with aid and assistance, the easier it will be to get back on good terms."

A senior Pakistani official told the Guardian that during his meeting with Cameron, Zardari intends to "put him straight" and press him to be "more careful in what he says".

Cameron looks naive at best and out of his depth at worst.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Cameron, United Kingdom, Pakistan

White House shifts Afghanistan strategy towards talks with Taliban.

It's taken a long time for Washington to come around to this idea.

The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously been lukewarm.

Negotiating with the Taliban has long been advocated by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, and the British and Pakistani governments, but resisted by Washington.

The Guardian has learned that while the American government is still officially resistant to the idea of talks with Taliban leaders, behind the scenes a shift is under way and Washington is encouraging Karzai to take a lead in such negotiations.

"There is a change of mindset in DC," a senior official in Washington said. "There is no military solution. That means you have to find something else. There was something missing."

That missing element was talks with the Taliban leadership, the official added.

People forget that the Taliban were not actually the enemy at the start of all this. Bush invaded Afghanistan to capture bin Laden and to destroy al Qaeda. When he realised that this would not be possible, both he and Blair changed their language and started to talk of al Qaeda and the Taliban as if they were both the same thing.

Indeed, Blair - before the invasion - famously said that if the Taliban were to hand over bin Laden then they would be allowed to remain in power. And anyone with a memory of Russia's invasion of Afghanistan will well remember that Ronald Reagan referred to the Taliban as "the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.”

So, it is not actually that outrageous for Obama to seek another way to end this conflict, certainly it is not without precedent.

The US has laid down basic conditions for any group seeking negotiations. They are: end all ties to al-Qaida, end violence, and accept the Afghan constitution.

A senior Pakistani diplomat said: "The US needs to be negotiating with the Taliban; those Taliban with no links to al-Qaida. We need a power-sharing agreement in Afghanistan, and it will have to be negotiated with all the parties.

I have no idea whether or not this would be successful, but I do think that the US needs to start thinking outside the box. There was never going to be a purely military victory in Afghanistan, but withdrawal will be impossible until you know that the government you are leaving in place can survive. And that can't be guaranteed unless you know that it is at least as powerful as the forces opposing it.

To that end, these proposed talks make some kind of sense.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Afghanistan, Taliban, Pakistan

Israel's "Nuclear Global Legitimacy".

Avner Cohen makes a strange point in today's Ha'aretz newspaper regarding Israel's nuclear ambiguity:

Let there be no doubt - Israel's policy of nuclear opacity is perceived by many the world over, including its best friends, as a political anachronism that is hard to swallow. To them, the problem is not the question of Israel having nuclear capacity, but the country's refusal to acknowledge it. The more Israel is viewed as a cautious, responsible nuclear nation, the harder it is to accept its policy of opacity as appropriate.

Opacity is widely perceived as concealment, an act of covering up a secret that cannot be revealed to the public. Today, however, the secret is known to all, so it's unclear why it must remain wrapped in ambiguity. In a world demanding that Iran speak the truth over its nuclear activity, ambiguity is seen as a bizarre relic from the past.

My understanding of this, and I am sure American readers can correct me if I am wrong, is that Israel's ambiguity is linked to the inability of the US to give aid to country's who possess nuclear weapons but have not signed up to the NNPT.

It is for that reason that I thought Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity exists.

Cohen appears to be arguing that Israel, by refusing to send Netanyahu to Obama's nuclear summit, is missing a chance "to win global legitimacy for its nuclear program".

I don't think that there is any such chance. Obama is moving towards nuclear disarmament. The 40 year old deal - between the US and Israel - which protects Israel from ever having to declare her nuclear status is no longer in the interests of the United States as it's currently being defined by Barack Obama.

It's inconceivable that the US and Russia would ever contemplate going too far down the disarmament road without addressing the issue of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.

Where Cohen sees a chance "to win global legitimacy for it's nuclear programme", I see only the opposite. The US and Russia would only ask Israel to acknowledge her nuclear arsenal as a first step to asking her to dismantle it.

The notion that Israel could prove herself "as a cautious, responsible nuclear nation" seems to me to me to missing the direction in which Obama is moving.

Obviously his presidency is not going to result in a nuclear free world, but neither is it going to result in a world where the US and Russia start the process of disarming whilst India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea maintain their status quo.

This is yet another point where the interests of the US and Israel are set to clash. Cohen is kidding himself if he thinks Netanyahu is missing a chance to legitimise weaponry which two of the world's largest powers are seeking to dismantle.

Such "global legitimacy" is a myth.

Click here for full article.

Tags: nuclear disarmament, US, Russia, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea

Clinton Faces Pakistani Anger at Drone Attacks.

Why is it that politicians of both political stripes in the US appear to find this so hard to understand?

Clinton put her case directly to the public Friday in televised appearances in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, fielding angry questions about the alleged activities of U.S. contractor Blackwater in Pakistan, the tough conditions that came with a $1.5 billion-a-year American aid package and alleged U.S. favoritism toward Pakistan's archenemy, India.

One tribesman bluntly told her: "Your presence in the region is not good for peace."

"We are fighting a war that is imposed on us. It's not our war. It is your war," journalist Asma Shirazi told Clinton during the women's meeting. "You had one 9-11. We are having daily 9-11s in Pakistan."

Large swathes of the Pakistani public do not support the war on terror and it's things like this which don't help:

One woman asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.

''Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?'' the woman asked. Then she asked if Clinton considered both the U.S. missile strikes and militant bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier in the week as acts of terrorism.

''No, I do not,'' Clinton replied.

If drone attacks were taking place in New York City or in London, then I am sure there are few of us who have any doubt what Clinton would refer to them as. Why is it so different if the attacks are taking place in Pakistan?

This Israeli inspired argument that the fact that terrorists "hide amongst the civilian population" somehow removes any moral obligation from the people firing rockets to avoid civilian casualties at all costs is simply repugnant nonsense. Indeed, it is that very attitude which has people demanding that war crimes charges be brought against the IDF.

The killing of innocents anywhere is to be condemned, whether it is caused by a Palestinian rocket, an Israeli bomb or an American drone. And Clinton's flippant dismissal of the deaths of so many innocent Pakistanis will hardly win many round to her cause.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Hillary Clinton, Pakistan

MPs and peers call for inquiry into torture

Parliament's joint committee on human rights have now published their stinging report, which stops short of accusing the British government of complicity in torture, but insists that an independent inquiry must be set up to investigate the numerous and detailed allegations of such complicity.

Andrew Dismore, the committee's Labour chairman, said: "If the allegations are true they amount to complicity. They have not been tested but given the scale and number simply to issue a blanket denial is not adequate. That is why we are calling for an independent inquiry."

Among a list of actions that it says would amount to complicity in torture, and therefore in breach of the UK's legal obligations, the report includes "the provision of questions to such a foreign intelligence service to be put to a detainee who has been, is being, or likely to be tortured". It also includes "the systematic reception of information known or thought likely to have been obtained from detainees subjected to torture".

It adds: "For the purposes of state responsibility for complicity in torture ... 'complicity' means simply one state giving assistance to another state in the commission of torture, or acquiescing in such torture, in the knowledge ... of the circumstances of the torture which is or has been taking place."

The BBC have already obtained a highly redacted telegram believed to have been cabled from MI5 headquarters to the official it sent to Pakistan to question the terrorist suspect Binyam Mohamed.

And there are several questions included in the cable which the British Authorities would like to be put to Mr Mohamed:

In the telegram, MI5 refers to Mr Mohamed as the "dirty bomber" and states that he is a "committed Islamist".

It wants to know about his time in the UK, which mosques he used and who he associated with there.

The telegram states: "Has he ever attended training camps in the UK? If so where did he train, with who, what was he taught?"

It also suggests Mr Mohamed is questioned about his passport and his travel arrangements to Pakistan.

The document said: "Who did he buy the passport from? How did he make contact with this individual? Where did this individual live, did he visit him at home or did they meet him in a neutral location?"

And the High Court have revealed further evidence of the British government providing questions to be asked of suspects:

In a judgment revised after the disclosure of fresh evidence from MI5, the high court said on Friday it was now clear that MI5 "knew the circumstances" of Mohamed's secret detention at "a covert location", now known to be Morocco.

In their judgment, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones also revealed that MI5 sent the "US authorities" – believed to be the CIA – questions to ask Mohamed. Over a period of more than two years, MI5 received five reports from the US about Mohamed and gave the US a list of 70 further questions to be put to him.

The high court judgment contains evidence that appears to come clearly under the complicity criteria spelled out in today's report.

So, the providing of questions has already been established. And, the other day, I spoke of the governments attitude to the receipt of information gained in this way.

Then Lord Brown went even further stating, "It [the government] has a prime responsibility to safeguard the security of the state and would be failing in its duty if it ignores whatever it may learn."

Far from not acting on intelligence gathered through the use of torture, Lord Brown actually argued that the government "would be failing in it's duty if it ignores what it may learn". So, we can hardly pretend that the government would not use such information when Lord Brown is on record arguing the very opposite.

Today's report says: "If the government engaged in an arrangement with a country that was known to torture in a widespread way and turned a blind eye to what was going on, systematically receiving and/or relying on the information but not physically participating in the torture, that might well cross the line into complicity.

"Our experience over the past year is that ministers are determined to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and accountability on these matters, refusing requests to give oral evidence; providing a standard answer to some of our written questions, which fails to address the issues; and ignoring other questions entirely.

"Ministers should not be able to act in this way. The fact that they can do so confirms that the system for ministerial accountability for security and intelligence matters is woefully deficient ... There is now no other way to restore public confidence in the intelligence services than by setting up an independent inquiry."

It does not give one confidence to read of the way ministers are routinely avoiding giving answers on this subject, or giving standard answers which avoid the actual questions being asked, or simply ignoring questions which they appear to find inconvenient or embarrassing to answer.

Nor does the government's initial response fill me with any great confidence.

The Foreign Office told the committee: "We unreservedly condemn the use of torture and our clear policy is not to participate in, solicit, encourage, or condone the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment for any purpose."

Read the report yourself and decide whether that is remotely credible. The amount of people claiming the UK was complicit in their torture is disturbing to say the least.

UPDATE:

It's also informative to read the instructions given to operatives in the field who complained that the US were mistreating detainees.

The MI6 officer reported that the US military had mistreated the detainee before the questioning began. It is not clear what details he or she gave, but they were sufficient to provoke a remarkably rapid response. The next day clear instructions were sent to the officer - and copied to every other MI6 and MI5 officer in the field - explaining how to deal with this situation. The speed of the reaction could suggest that the solution devised by senior MI5 and MI6 officers and the agencies' lawyers had been rushed, and was possibly ill-thought out. Conversely, it could be a sign that the dilemma had been anticipated, and the remedy very carefully considered in advance.

"Under the various Geneva Conventions and protocols," London warned its intelligence and security officers, "all prisoners, however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection. You have commented on their treatment. It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this.

"The law does not require you to intervene to prevent this". There's knowledge that torture is being committed right there. And inaction to prevent it which is arguably crossing the line into collusion.

Click title for full article.

Tags: UK politics, Binyam Mohamed, torture, MI5, Pakistan

Revealed – the secret torture evidence MI5 tried to suppress.

David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, has used parliamentary privilege to expose the way in which the UK government are complicit in the torture of terrorist suspects and the methodology by which they have used the courts to hide what it is that they were doing.

David Davis told the story of Rangzieb Ahmed, and how the British intelligence agencies allowed him to enter Pakistan, despite the fact that they could have arrested him, and how they fed questions to the ISI whilst knowing that he was being tortured.

This is the first time that the information has entered the public domain. Previously it has been suppressed through the process of secret court hearings and, had the Guardian or other media organisations reported it, they would have exposed themselves to the risk of prosecution for contempt of court.

Davis told MPs that although sufficient evidence had been gathered to ensure Ahmed could be prosecuted for serious terrorism offences, he was permitted to fly from Manchester to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, in 2006 while under surveillance. He then detailed the way in which the British authorities:

• Tipped off the ISI that Ahmed was on his way.

• Told the ISI he was a terrorist and suggested that he should be detained.

• Were aware of the methods used by the ISI while questioning terrorism suspects.

• Drew up a list of questions for the ISI to put to Ahmed.

• Questioned him themselves after he had been in ISI custody for around 13 days.

This is the first time we have had actual proof that the UK government, who could have arrested Ahmed, instead chose to allow him to leave the country and have him arrested in a country where we knew that he would be tortured.

Addressing the Commons last night, Davis said: "A more obvious case of outsourcing of torture, a more obvious case of passive rendition, I cannot imagine. He should have been arrested by the UK in 2006. He was not. The authorities knew he intended to travel to Pakistan, so they should have prevented that. Instead, they suggested the ISI arrest him. They knew he would be tortured, and they organised to construct a list of questions and provide it to the ISI."

The Guardian reported yesterday that MI5 officers had visited Ahmed whilst he was in a British prison and offered him money and/or a reduced sentence if he would withdraw his claim that he had been tortured.

Ahmed is currently suing the British government for colluding in the torture he received whilst in Pakistan.

Ahmed is one of several British citizens and residents who have alleged British complicity in their torture in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and the UAE during the so-called war on terror.

Davis told MPs : "For each case, the government has denied complicity, but at the same time fiercely defended the secrecy of its actions which has made it impossible to put the full facts in the public domain, despite the clear public interest to doing so."

Ahmed, he said, "was astonishingly not arrested but was allowed to leave the country … the British intelligence agencies wrote to their opposite numbers in Pakistan, the ISI, to suggest that they arrest him". Davis went on: "The intelligence officer who wrote to the Pakistanis did so in full knowledge of the normal methods used by the ISI against terrorist suspects that it holds."

Davis said Ahmed was "viciously tortured by the ISI. He [Ahmed] claims among other things, he was beaten with wooden staves, the size of cricket stumps,whipped with a three-foot length of tyre rubber and had three fingernails removed from his left hand. There is a dispute between British intelligence officers as to exactly when his fingernails were removed, but an independent pathologist confirmed it happened during the period when he was in Pakistani custody."

Davis also said there was a pressing need for an inquiry into Britain's involvement in torture. "The Americans have made a clean breast of their complicity, whilst explicitly not prosecuting the junior officers who were acting under instruction. We have done the opposite. As it stands, we are awaiting a police investigation which will presumably end in the prosecution of frontline officers. At the same time the government is fighting tooth and nail to use state secrecy to cover up both crimes and political embarrassments, to protect those who are the real villains of the piece, those who approved the policies in the first place."

Davis has performed a true public service here. He has put on the record things that could only be said by an MP enjoying parliamentary privilege. He has put on the record things which previously the government have used the courts to keep from us.

Miliband and Brown have been ruthless in the way in which they have used the courts to keep British involvement in torture quiet, with Miliband insisting that to reveal what we have done would "give succour to or enemies". As I said at the time:

Why, if published, would this policy "lend succour to our enemies"? If the policy is as squeaky clean as we have been led to believe then there is no "succour" for any of our enemies in it's release, rather the opposite. Isn't Miliband, by refusing to ever release details of this policy, actually admitting that there is something to hide here? Something which would "lend succour to our enemies"?

David Davis, by using parliamentary privilege, has opened the can of worms. Now we can clearly see the complicity between the British government and the ISI.

And Davis is right to demand an investigation into this matter. It certainly looks as if we have been complicit in the torturing of suspects. The full degree to which we have done so deserves to be exposed. Miliband and Brown have been using the courts to silence any hint of their policy from becoming public. Hopefully, Davis' action will make it impossible for the government to continue to use the courts to shield us from what they have actually done.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Rangzieb Ahmed, Pakistan, Torture, Brown, Miliband, ISI

MI5 faces fresh torture allegations.

I spoke yesterday about the British government's possible collusion in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, and now today comes a fresh allegation that MI5 colluded in the torture of a British former civil servant in Bangladesh. Only this time the man is prepared to bring charges against Jacqui Smith.

Lawyers for the British man, Jamil Rahman, are to file a damages claim alleging that Smith was complicit in assault, unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and breaches of human rights legislation over his alleged ill-treatment while detained in Bangladesh.

The claims bring to three the number of countries in which British intelligence agents have been accused of colluding in the torture of UK nationals. Rahman says that he was the victim of repeated beatings over a period of more than two years at the hands of Bangladeshi intelligence officers, and he claims that a pair of MI5 officers were blatantly involved in his ordeal.

The two men would leave the room where he was being interrogated whenever he refused to answer their questions, he says, and he would be severely beaten. They would then return to the room to resume the interrogation.

On occasion, he adds, his wife would be held in a nearby cell, and his torturers would threaten to rape her if he did not cooperate. Rahman's lawyers say that there is a wealth of evidence to support his allegations, including eyewitness testimony and medical evidence. Rahman was also able to provide his lawyers with the number of a mobile telephone that he says was used by one of the MI5 officers and a number for MI5 in London.

It's hard not to conclude that a change has taken place in the British policy during the war on terror and that, to some extent, a decision has been made to turn a blind eye to rough stuff and that somewhere along the line we have embraced Cheney's move to the dark side.

Gordon Brown is promising to review the policy, but he - and/or Blair - needs to answer as to why the policy was ever changed in the first place. When did it become acceptable for British intelligence officers to turn a blind eye to abuse? Who ordered the change?

The opposition are up in arms demanding that an inquiry take place:

Among those demanding an inquiry are opposition leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg; Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions; Lord Carlile of Berriew, the government's independent reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation; Lord Howe, foreign secretary in the Thatcher government, and Lord Guthrie, former chief of defence staff.

There is, of course, a third incident where the UK are alleged to have colluded in torture, as we shouldn't forget the case of Rangzieb Ahmed who was tortured in Pakistan with what Human Rights Watch called, "widespread complicity" between the Pakistan intelligence services, ISI, and the British intelligence services, MI5.

Human Rights Watch detected a "systemic" modus operandi among British security services to collude in torture and, with this latest allegation, it becomes ever harder to ignore the facts as they start to pile up.

We are just outside the room too many times - as people inside the rooms are being tortured - for us to ever make the case that we don't know what is going on.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Jamil Rahman, Jacqui Smith, Binyam Mohamed, HRW, Human Rights Watch, torture, Pakistan, MI5

The 52 minutes of Obama magic that changed the nuclear rules.

As right wing bloggers obsess over whether or not Obama has stopped using the phrase war on terror or are lambasting him for observing customs like bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia, a man Bush never bowed to as he much preferred a good old snog, Obama is getting on with doing something much more radical.

I would have thought his aim of ridding the world of many of it's nuclear weapons would have incensed them, but they appear not to have even noticed what he is proposing, as they are so obsessed with trivia. In two recent speeches, both exactly 26 minutes long, Obama has set out a radical plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons:

The president pledged a drive on nuclear disarmament, possibly bigger than any ever attempted. He spelled out how he would accelerate arms control agreements with Russia, following his first summit meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev last week. The deal to conclude a new arms reduction treaty with Moscow, which would slash stockpiles by about a third was a beginning, setting the stage for further cuts.

Building on the momentum of a new agreement with the Russians, Obama said he wanted to cajole the other nuclear powers into agreeing international arms cuts.

This would include Britain's independent nuclear deterrent as well as France's force de frappe and could run into resistance.

I love the fact that this guy is such an idealist, and that he will take on something like this even though he must know that he will run into considerable resistance. He's doing it, not because it is easy, he is doing it because it is the right thing to do.

And he is signaling such a reversal of the tactics of the Bush years, where Bush actually proposed developing new bunker busting nuclear weapons. The signal Obama is sending simply couldn't be more different than the message sent by the Bush White House.

"It is time for testing of nuclear weapons to be banned," Obama said. He called for a resuscitation of the 1996 comprehensive test ban treaty outlawing all nuclear tests. Obama's Democrat predecessor, Bill Clinton, signed the treaty, but then gave up on it after running into resistance from the Republican-controlled Senate which refused to ratify it a decade ago. George Bush did not pursue the issue.

America is the most important country that has not ratified the treaty, although other nuclear countries such as China, Israel and Pakistan, as well as Iran have also declined to ratify.

Obama said he would pursue US ratification "immediately and aggressively".

This is one of my bugbears when it comes to our argument against nations like Iran. Under the NNPT no non nuclear country is allowed to develop nuclear weapons, but there is also an agreement that the countries which do have nuclear weapons will disarm.

That part of the equation is always ignored in this argument concerning Iran and other countries. We demand that others comply with a treaty that the US, under Bush, was clearly in breach of by developing a new range of nuclear weapons, rather than actively acting to disarm as the treaty demands.

Obama is certainly moving in the right direction. The last US president to attempt this was Ronald Reagan:

In 1986 at the Reykjavik summit, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, both passionate about nuclear disarmament, shocked deterrence experts with an unimaginable proposal – total nuclear disarmament. “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” said Reagan. “We can do that,” replied Gorbachev, “Let’s eliminate them. We can eliminate them.”

However, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz explained that the proposal was “too much for people to absorb, precisely because it was outside the bounds of conventional wisdom,” and “the world was not ready for Ronald Reagan’s boldness.”

It also failed because Reagan refused to drop his star wars scheme. But Obama could be said to be following in Reagan's footsteps. Perhaps that's why the right wing blogs are leaving this subject alone and obsessing over facile rubbish.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, nuclear weapons, NNPT, Iran, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, UK

Pakistan declares: 'We are at war.'

I watched Channel Four News last night with my mouth agape as a spokesman for the government of Pakistan attempted to claim that the Sri Lanken cricket team had been given "presidential security".

The president of Pakistan is not very secure at all if a dozen gunmen can get that near him and cause the chaos and destruction which was visited upon the Sri Lankan cricket team.

The spectacular military-style raid in Lahore bore marked similarities to the assault in Mumbai last year, which left 172 people dead. Pakistani officials suggested the Islamist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the carnage in the Indian city, also carried out the attack in Lahore.

What happened yesterday is certain to stop sports teams from abroad visiting Pakistan for the foreseeable future and deals a grave blow to the country's plans to host the World Cup in 2011. It also highlights how security is disintegrating, with the civilian government seemingly unable to cope with the tide of violence unleashed by militants.

This should be a worry to all of us. The government in Pakistan doesn't appear to have control and the militant groups are certainly behaving as if they are feeling more emboldened by the day.

Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari, said he "strongly condemned" the attack and pledged that those responsible would be caught. Rehman Malik, the Interior Minister, said the country was in a "state of war... Be patient, we will flush all these terrorists out of the country".

Salmaan Taseer, the Punjab province's Governor, said: "It was the same terrorists who attacked Mumbai. It was the same pattern, the kind of weaponry they had, the way they attacked, they were obviously trained." He added that the gunmen had been chased into a nearby shopping area after the attack where police had lost track of them. The province's police chief, Khawaja Farooq, said "some" arrests had been made but refused to say whether they included any of those who had taken part in the attack.

Obama has, rightly, addressed Pakistan as a major concern and highlighted the fact that we need to proceed with great sensitivity and care when addressing the issues in Pakistan, but we do urgently need to engage there.

The problem is that much of the populace are against the idea that the Pakistan government should take on al Qaeda:

Just 44 percent of urban Pakistanis favor sending the Pakistani army to the Northwestern tribal areas to "pursue and capture al Qaeda fighters." Only 48 percent would allow the Pakistan army to act against "Taliban insurgents who have crossed over from Afghanistan." In both cases, about a third oppose such military action and a fifth decline to answer. The poll was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org in collaboration with, and with financial support from, the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Pakistanis reject overwhelmingly the idea of permitting foreign troops to attack al Qaeda on Pakistani territory. Four out of five (80%) say their government should not allow American or other foreign troops to enter Pakistan to pursue and capture al Qaeda fighters. Three out of four (77%) oppose allowing foreign troops to attack Taliban insurgents based in Pakistan.

This leaves Asif Ali Zardari in a precarious position.

If he continues to pursue al Qaeda, then there is every chance that the army will turn on him, and that another coup will take place.

But the situation can't be left as it is where gunmen can roam the streets attacking visiting cricket teams. I actually think that Zardari might, at this moment, have some wriggle room as I am sure most Pakistanis recognise the damage which will have been done to their international reputation by this attack. And, indeed, to their chances of being able to hold the World Cup in 2011.

Cricket is their national sport, but even they must recognise that no cricketing teams will be visiting Pakistan for a long time after what took place yesterday.

Perhaps this might give Zardari the room he needs to act.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Pakistan, Sri Lanka, cricket, Zardari

UK agents 'colluded with torture in Pakistan'.

A shocking new report from the civil liberties group, Human Rights Watch, has alleged that there has been "widespread complicity" between the Pakistan intelligence services, ISI, and the British intelligence services, MI5, which has resulted in British citizens being tortured.

This report comes hot on the heels of the recent attempts from David Miliband to prevent a British court from releasing evidence which the court have strongly implied proves that Binyam Mohamed was tortured whilst being held by US authorities. When it turned out that Miliband was actually asking the US government to threaten the British with a loss of intelligence sharing should this evidence ever be released by a court, I began to suspect that the British might be more closely involved in this torture than we had previously suspected. And that is exactly the allegation which is surfacing here.

The documents are believed to contain evidence about the torture of Mohamed and British complicity in his maltreatment. Mohamed will return to Britain this week. Doctors who examined him in Guantánamo found evidence of prolonged physical and mental mistreatment.

Ali Dayan Hasan, who led the Pakistan-based inquiry, said sources within the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), the Intelligence Bureau and the military security services had provided "confirmation and information" relating to British collusion in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Hasan said the Human Rights Watch (HRW) evidence collated from Pakistan intelligence officials indicated a "systemic" modus operandi among British security services, involving a significant number of UK agents from MI5 rather than maverick elements. Different agents were deployed to interview different suspects, many of whom alleged that prior to interrogation by British officials they were tortured by Pakistani agents.

Among the 10 identified cases of British citizens and residents mentioned in the report is Rangzieb Ahmed, 33, from Rochdale, who claims he was tortured by Pakistani intelligence agents before being questioned by two MI5 officers. Ahmed was convicted of being a member of al-Qaida at Manchester crown court, yet the jury was not told that three of the fingernails of his left hand had been removed.

How can any conviction obtained in this way be considered remotely safe? And, if the government considered such a person a real and serious threat, then how could they allow him to be tortured when they must surely know that any appeal court who learns of such treatment will immediately order his release and condemn his conviction as unsafe?

But the most troubling aspect of the report is it's claim that this British complicity in torture is "systemic". Until now I have thought that have been watching Britain turning a blind eye to American zealousness, that the little brother was too weak to ever tell the big brother to stop.

But here we appear to have Britain hand in hand with Pakistan playing a game of "see no evil, hear no evil".

Hasan said: "What the research suggests is that these are not incidents involving one particular rogue officer or two, but rather an array of individuals involved over a period of several years.

"The issue is not just British complicity in the torture of British citizens, it is the issue of British complicity in the torture period. We know of at least 10 cases, but the complicity probably runs much deeper because it involves a series of terrorism suspects who are Pakistani. This is the heart of the matter.

"They are not the same individuals [MI5 officers] all the time. I know that the people who have gone to see Siddiqui in Peshawar are not the same people who have seen Ahmed in Rawalpindi."

The Foreign Office are saying that the British do not condone or encourage torture, but that is rather missing the point. In several instances quoted the British walk in the door shortly after the torture has taken place, obviously playing the good cop to the Pakistani bad cop. They are, at the very least, deciding to ignore torture.

Hasan said that evidence indicated a considerable number of UK officers were involved in interviewing terrorism suspects after they were allegedly tortured. He told the Observer: "We don't know who the individuals [British intelligence officers] were, but when you have different personnel coming in and behaving in a similar fashion it implies some level of systemic approach to the situation, rather than one eager beaver deciding it is absolutely fine for someone to be beaten or hung upside down."

He accused British intelligence officers of turning a blind eye as UK citizens endured torture at the hands of Pakistan's intelligence agencies.

"They [the British] have met the suspect ... and have conspicuously failed to notice that someone is in a state of high physical distress, showing signs of injury. If you are a secret service agent and fail to notice that their fingernails are missing, you ought to be fired."

It's easy to say that, if there is any truth in all this, that Miliband would have to go. However, this is a Labour government. It's own members won't stand for it having taken part in such activities. If this is true, then the entire government should fall as far as I am concerned. We were shocked that such behaviour was condoned by a practically insane bunch of neo-con zealots in the US, but if it's being condoned by Gordon Brown and the British Labour party then I will honestly feel as if I have lost all faith in politicians full stop.

Click title for full article.

Tags: United Kingdom, Pakistan, Miliband, torture, MI5, ISI, Binyam Mohamed

Pakistan imposes Islamic law in Taliban stronghold.

The government of Pakistan have made an astonishing concession to extremists by deciding to allow sharia law in the vast region of the north-west called Malakand, despite admitting that the Taliban are "trying to take over the state".

Critics warned that the new sharia regulations represented a capitulation to the extremists' demands, and that it would be difficult to stop hardliners elsewhere in the country from demanding that their areas also come under Islamic law.

"This is definitely a surrender," said Khadim Hussain of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a thinktank in Islamabad. "If you keep treating a community as something different from the rest of the country, it will isolate them."

Javed Iqbal, a retired judge, speaking on Pakistani television, said: "It means that there is not one law in the country. It will disintegrate this way. If you concede to this, you will go on conceding."

One never makes such concessions from a position of strength, so you have to wonder just how much control the government of Pakistan actually has if it is making such extraordinary concessions.

In an interview broadcast today by the US television channel CBS, Zardari admitted that the future of Pakistan was in grave danger from the Taliban, who are present in "huge parts" of the country. Islamabad is under severe pressure from the US, Britain and other western allies to rein in the extremists, who fight both in Pakistan and Afghanistan and play host to al-Qaida.

Zardari said: "We are aware of the fact [the Taliban are] trying to take over the state of Pakistan. We're fighting for the survival of Pakistan. "

Apparently, cases in Pakistan courts can take years to settle and the Taliban have been exploiting public anger over this by proposing sharia law as a replacement. The government hopes that by offering a light form of sharia law it might placate the public and rob the Taliban of a public grievance which they have been playing upon.

The new law is a relatively mild form of sharia, with the aim of undermining support for the extremists and their populist demand for speedy Islamic justice. Religious experts, known as a qazi, will sit in the court, alongside a regular judge, to ensure that the rulings are in compliance with Islam.

However, many believe that the Taliban will not ultimately accept this form of Islamic law.

This looks to me like the start of a very slippery slope and it's a grave worry when a nuclear power starts making concessions of this kind. The situation in Pakistan is terrifying, so I am pleased that the Obama administration are offering a new "sensitive" approach, as it certainly sounds like it's an area which we should approach wearing kid gloves.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Pakistan

Pakistan identified as biggest foreign policy test.

It says a lot about the good sense of the Obama administration that he can admit that Pakistan is the situation that "scares" him. I never felt that Bush ever understood the situation in Pakistan, as every pressure he placed on Musharraf simply made the situation worse. It's all well and good to demand that Pakistan must help in the war on terror but, anyone who believes in democracy as Bush claimed to do, must understand that in a democracy it is very hard to work against the will of the people, and many of the people did not agree with what Bush was asking Pakistan to do.

The situation is much more nuanced and difficult than Bush ever acknowledged.

The country is threatened by a growing Islamist insurgency, economic collapse and a crisis of governance as it struggles to establish democratic rule. The Obama administration believes Pakistan is key to its objectives of pacifying Afghanistan and going after al-Qaida and has appointed a pugnacious diplomatic troubleshooter, Richard Holbrooke, as a special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"We often call this situation Afpak," said Holbrooke at a conference in Munich yesterday, before flying to Islamabad. "There will be more focus on Pakistan," he said. "A new and fragile democracy has emerged ... but the situation in Pakistan requires attention and sympathy."

I am delighted to hear Holbrooke talk of sympathy, for that is exactly what is needed here. The last thing we need is for a continuation of the Bush policy of simply laying down the law and demanding that the Pakistan government comply with American wishes.

That policy will result in possible civil unrest in Pakistan, which is the last thing we need in a country with nuclear weapons.

Pakistan is al-Qaida's headquarters, while its tribal territory, which runs along the Afghan border, is used by the Taliban to launch attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan. Some Pakistani extremists who previously focused on Afghanistan, have now turned inwards, spawning a vicious Pakistani Taliban movement which challenges the writ of the state. Obama warned in a television interview this month that the spillover of the war in Afghanistan risks "destabilising neighbouring Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons".

The security situation in Pakistan seems to deteriorate daily. Last week's headlines, for instance, included: a bombing of a religious procession in the central town of Dera Ghazi Khan, which claimed at least 27 lives; government helicopter gunship attacks that killed 52 militants in the Khyber area of the tribal region; the kidnapping of a senior UN official by gunmen; and the beheading of a Polish engineer who was abducted five months ago. A videotape of the execution was released last night by his captors.

I have no idea what policies Obama is going to pursue in Pakistan but I am delighted that he appears, at least, to acknowledge that there is no political consensus in Pakistan when it comes to what to do about al Qaeda. Indeed, there is some question over whether the civilian government are actually in charge of their own army.

"The civilian leadership is weak and fearful of the inevitable in Pakistan, that it oversteps the mark and runs the risk of being removed [by the army]," said Rashed Rahman, a political analyst based in Lahore. "It's a non-functional government."

The army has repeatedly shown that it will not bow to civilians on national security, refusing a government order last year, for instance, to place the top spy agency, the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, under government control.

Bush acted as if Musharraf was duty bound to accept his goals as his own. That was a suicidal policy which ignored political reality.

Obama, at least, is willing to accept that political reality and shape policy which is sympathetic to it. We all know what we would like them to do, but saying it doesn't make it doable.

Obama, unlike Bush, appears to have grasped that.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, Pakistan, Holbrooke, al Qaeda

Sarah Palin contradicts McCain’s Pakistan position while ordering some cheese steaks.

It's easy to tell when McCain is lying. It's usually when his lips are moving.

Here he is confronted over comments he made to Obama:

During Friday’s debate, Obama criticized the Bush administration for sending billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan without ridding the border region of terrorists.

McCain fired back hard, arguing that newly elected Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has had his “hands full” and suggesting that Obama’s tough talk was naïve.

“You don’t say that out loud,” McCain said. “If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.”

He is then shown a video of Palin making the exact same claim that the US should enter Pakistan from Afghanistan if necessary.

McCain then claims that Palin shares his view and then pretends that she has been caught out by a young man in a bar and that this does not represent her true position.

The only problem with this argument is that Palin gave the exact same answer during her first TV interview with Charlie Gibson:

Gibson then asks her if the US have the right to cross the Afghanistan border into Pakistan to pursue terrorists without the permission of the Pakistan government. It's about as obvious a trap as he could possibly lay for anyone who has paid a moment's notice to this election. Does she agree with McCain or Obama? She put forward what Gibson described as "a blizzard of words" in an attempt to avoid answering, but eventually concluded that America has to do "whatever it takes", which put her on the side of Obama rather than McCain.

McCain must know this because it is unthinkable that he didn't watch her first ever TV interview. What's astonishing is that she is still publicly stating this, either because she hasn't been told by the McCain team to stop saying it, or she is too stupid to remember what the McCain position is.

And it's interesting to hear McCain now pretend that his objection is about Obama saying out loud what he would do regarding bin Laden. Apparently, it's simply naive to let an enemy know what you would do in advance.

Times Online, January 26, 2006:

[McCain] would make clear to the American people that military action against Iran is an option. Bombing? He nods. . . . .. Military action must always be the last option, but he warns: "There is only one scenario worse than military action in Iran and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Jackson Diehl, The Washington Post, January 29, 2006:

The debate on Iran is drifting toward the ugly question that the Bush administration would most like to avoid. That is: Is it preferable for the United States to live with the consequences of a nuclear-armed Iran, or with those of a unilateral American military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities?

President Bush has never answered that question; instead, he and his State Department have repeatedly called an Iranian bomb "intolerable" while building a diplomatic coalition that won't tolerate a military solution. But two of our more principled senators, Republican John McCain and Democrat Joe Lieberman, have this month faced the Iranian Choice -- and both endorsed military action. McCain was most direct: "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option," he said on "Face the Nation." "That is a nuclear-armed Iran."

So, it's okay to threaten other Muslim nations with attack, just don't do it to the one which actually houses bin Laden. Because that's being naive.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: McCain, Palin, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Stephanopoulos

Musharraf bows to the inevitable.

Of all world leaders Musharraf was the one who Bush left in the most impossible position. Shortly after 9-11 Powell flew to Pakistan to demand that Musharraf dedicate his government to the removal of al Qaeda, a policy which was unpopular amongst his army and amongst huge swathes of his population.

And, in the intervening years, Musharraf has walked a tightrope, doing just enough to keep Bush satisfied - or, if not satisfied, at least not utterly dissatisfied - and trying not to upset the militant groups within his own country; a task at which he was obviously less successful judging from the amount of assassination attempts on his life.

But, in the end, his attempt to dedicate the Pakistan government to the US cause has become impossible to sustain, the wolves have surrounded him, and Musharraf has bowed to the inevitable and resigned.

Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, bowed to massive domestic and international pressure to quit yesterday in a move that could further destabilise the volatile country if the coalition government fails to hold together now that their common enemy is removed.

A grim-faced Musharraf delivered an impassioned defence of his record on live television that lasted for over an hour. He kept the news of his resignation until the final moment, ending his almost nine years in power with "God bless Pakistan".

"If I was doing this just for myself, I might have chosen a different course but I put Pakistan first, as always," said the president, wearing a western suit and tie but speaking in the national language, Urdu.

The coalition government, led by the Pakistan People's party and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, had managed to stage a bloodless counter-coup by announcing two weeks ago that they planned to impeach the president.

Most members of the coalition government, which came to power after elections in February, did not want to go through the trauma of impeachment proceedings, hoping the threat of prosecution would be enough to convince the president to go. That strategy proved successful just two hours before parliament was due to meet to officially start the prosecution process.

Of course, his firing of the Chief Justice and the declaring of a state of emergency all contributed to Musharraf's downfall, but I do wonder what now for the Bush administration's policy regarding Pakistan. And I do wonder what now for this dysfunctional coalition in Pakistan now that they have removed Musharraf, an objective that has often appeared to be the only thing which united them.

It will be impossible to succeed in Afghanistan without the co-operation of the Pakistan government, and any new Pakistani coalition must be aware that it was Musharraf's policy of supporting the US which, in part, led to his downfall.

The alliance he had accepted with the United States after the attacks of 9/11 boiled down, in the eyes of many, to an acceptance of something akin to client status. Each reported US raid in the tribal areas against Taliban or al-Qa'ida forces was a new illustration of Pakistan's compromised sovereignty. It was not their President's ambition that people could not forgive, but what they saw as the demeaning of Pakistan.

The presidential broadcast he made after 9/11, explaining to his fellow countrymen why they were now to be allied to the United States in its "war on terror" was masterly. But it was also agonising to watch him visibly wrestling with what were clearly conflicting demands of domestic and external security. It was as though he knew that he was sowing the seeds of his eventual defeat; that he was risking not only his political, but his physical survival.

This was a degree of risk that no other member of George Bush's "coalition of the willing" was required to take.

It is perhaps just as well that Bush's time in office is drawing to a close and that an incoming US president is perhaps going to have different objectives in the region than those Bush demanded from Musharraf.

Because the pressures of fighting the war on terror, and a campaign against the Taliban, who were previously (and some would say still are) supported by the ISI made his position simply untenable.

It's actually to Musharraf's credit that he lasted as long as he did. For the Bush regime, whilst badgering on about democracy, asked him to carry out a policy to which huge swathes of his populace were opposed.

I have always said that Bush did not have a Pakistan policy but, rather, he had a Musharraf policy. With Musharraf's departure, the failure of Bush's inability to look beyond him is about to become glaringly apparent.

Administration officials will now have to find allies within the fractious civilian government, which has so far shown scant interest in taking on militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda who have roosted in Pakistan’s badlands along the border with Afghanistan.

At the same time, suspicions between the American and Pakistani intelligence agencies and their militaries are deepening, and relations between the countries are at their lowest point since Mr. Musharraf pledged to ally Pakistan with the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

One of the first tasks of the incoming president will be to form a new relationship with Pakistan's fractured coalition government. That's not a task I envy him.

Click title for full article.

MI5 accused of colluding in torture of terrorist suspects

When did we sink so low? When did our abhorrence of torture become so worn out that it became a practice which we outsourced? Or, indeed, in the case of the US, a practice which they indulged in themselves and which the president felt able to publicly boast of?

A number of British terrorism suspects are claiming that MI5 outsourced their torture to the infamous Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, in an attempt to obtain information to secure the conviction of al Qaeda suspects.

Tayab Ali, a London-based lawyer for two of the men, said: "I am left with no doubt that, at the very worst, the British Security Service instigates the illegal detention and torture of British citizens, and at the very best turns a blind eye to torture."

One man from Manchester says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails slowly extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers. A number of his alleged associates were questioned in Manchester at the same time and two were subsequently charged. This man's lawyers say his fingernails were missing when they were eventually allowed to see him, more than a year after he was first detained. They say they have pathology reports that prove the nails were forcibly removed.

A second man, from Luton, Bedfordshire, alleges that two years earlier he was whipped, suspended by his wrists and beaten, and threatened with an electric drill, possibly at the same torture centre. His interrogation was coordinated with the questioning of several associates at Paddington Green police station, west London, and the questioning of a further suspect in Canada.

MI5 does not dispute questioning him several times during his 10 months' detention in Pakistan.

One would suspect that normally we could claim that we had no idea what the Pakistani authorities were doing to suspects they held in their facilities, however, in this case that theory does not appear to hold water.

MI5 is thought to be considering a defence based on its officers' insistence that they had no reason to know that the ISI might have been torturing the men - a position that Pakistani lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan and the UK say beggars belief. Even a high-ranking Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detective has conceded privately that there is little doubt that the Luton man was tortured.

In the US, the CIA were acting under the dubious legal authority granted by Yoo's torture memos, but there is no such equivalent here in the UK.

Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 it is an offence for British officials to instigate or consent to the inflicting of "severe pain or suffering" on any person, anywhere in the world, or even to acquiesce in such treatment. Any such offence could be punished by life imprisonment.

Why are we doing these things? Why, since 9-11, has our moral compass become so skewered that we are now indulging in actions which we have always abhorred?

There are some who would argue that the world changed on 9-11, but that's a false argument. Yes, we learned that there were people out there who would like to kill many of us, but in any "war of civilisation" surely we do not defend our values by throwing them away at the first opportunity? For, by engaging in actions which we have previously defined as immoral and uncivilised, aren't we saying that our values system was false?

Aren't we becoming the very thing which we claim to despise? Or is our torture somehow honourable because we outsource it?

Click title for full article.

Tags: MI5, Torture, Pakistan

An innocent man loses 5 years of his life at Guantanamo Bay

This guys story fits a pattern. It becomes impossible not to believe that this kind of torture became, for a while at least, systematic during the Bush years.

At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America’s shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.

The story Kurnaz told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley is a rare look inside that clandestine system of justice, where the government’s own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: Murat Kurnaz, Afghanistan, war on terror, secret rendition, torture, 60 minutes, Bush, Cheney

New Pakistani prime minister frees judges

Throughout his presidency George Bush has never had a policy for dealing with Pakistan, he has had a policy for dealing with Musharraf. That policy now lies in tatters as Musharraf's lack of power is laid bare for all to see.

Pakistan's new prime minister ordered the release from house arrest of the country's former chief justice within minutes of coming to power yesterday, driving home how rapidly President Pervez Musharraf's authority is ebbing.

Shortly after he was elected by a thumping majority by the new parliament, Yousaf Raza Gilani ordered the release of about 10 judges, headed by Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who have been illegally detained at home since November 3.

The Islamabad police had already received the message and lifted the barbed wire from around the judges' homes less than a mile away. Activists flooded towards Chaudhry's house, some scaling the low walls of what had officially been termed a sub-jail less than an hour earlier. The judge stood at the balcony with his wife and three children and addressed the raucous crowd squeezed into his garden. "I do not have words to thank you all," he said as fistfuls of petals filled the air.

It was Chaudhry's first public appearance in almost five months. But he said the fight for a free judiciary was not over. "We must keep our efforts focused for a bright future for Pakistan for the rule of law and the supremacy of the constitution," he said.

Supporters, many of whom have clashed with police armed with batons and tear gas over recent months, appeared dazed that their hero was finally free. "This is the victory of the people," declared Saeed Mehmood, a lawyer from nearby Rawalpindi. "I feel proud to be a Pakistani," said Athar Minallah, a confidant of the judge.

The government has promised to reinstate 60 judges fired by Musharraf, at least 10 of whom were under house arrest, within 30 days. A senior city administrator told state media that "all deposed judges are free to move".

It's the wonderful thing about elections, the people are free to elect representatives who will overturn decisions which they vehemently disagree with. Of course, Bush has been keen to have the Pakistan election count for nothing and has been badgering the Pakistanis to work with Musharraf.

The emotional scenes followed historic changes at the parliament where Gilani, an understated loyalist of the assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, was elected with 264 votes against 42 for Musharraf's man, Pervaiz Elahi.

"Democracy has been revived due to the sacrifice of Benazir Bhutto," he said in his first remarks as prime minister. Bhutto's son and political heir, 19-year-old Bilawal, watched from the visitor's gallery, wiping a tear from his eye.

Gilani's victory underlined the strength of the four-party coalition, which has the potential to become one of the most powerful civilian governments in Pakistan's history.

Musharraf's options look increasingly unappealing. The new government enjoys the two-thirds majority necessary to bring an impeachment motion against him. Even if he can stave off that prospect, Musharraf's powers are likely to be slashed by the government, reducing him to a largely symbolic role.

One can imagine similar scenes in the US when a new President closes Guantanamo Bay and restores Habeas Corpus. The feeling of a nightmare being over, of order and the rule of law being restored.

The Bush regime have acted consistently outside of the law, indeed, they operated at times outside of the law to such an extent that former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign unless Bush cease whatever it was that he was doing and return to the rule of law. And when one considers what a right wing figure Ashcroft was, one can only guess at what level of illegality would be needed to have him threaten to resign from a Republican administration.

So, when one watches these scenes being played out in Pakistan, these abuses of power being brought to an end by a democratic vote, one can't help but pray for the day that the same process takes place in the most powerful nation on Earth.

Musharraf's illegality affected most of us only as spectators, but Bush's illegality affected swathes of the planet, especially here in Europe, where we had to witness a British Attorney General declaring the Iraq war legal without a second resolution, when weeks earlier he had been arguing the very opposite. Indeed, the U-turn which the Attorney General made was so sudden that it prompted the resignation of Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Office, who stated in her resignation letter:

My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of UN security council resolution 1441 and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March. (The view expressed in that letter has of course changed again into what is now the official line.)

I cannot in conscience go along with advice - within the Office or to the public or Parliament - which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a resolution, particularly since an unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances which are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law.

But there was the feeling that the rules didn't matter and the law was whatever those in power decided it to be at any given moment.

The past eight years have been a very dark time in history and I honestly believe the Bush regime will be studied by future historians as a lesson to be learned about how the rule of law can be set aside by duplicitous politicians claiming to be acting for the good of all simply by citing national security.

But the sidelining of Musharraf reminds us all of the words of Gandhi:

"When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it, always."

And, as Musharraf is sidelined and rendered impotent, we must take heart and remember that one day soon the days of Bush will be over and the rule of law will be restored.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Musharraf, Pakistan, Chaudhry, judges released, Yousaf Raza Gilani, Bush, rule of law, democracy, legality